UA007 003 Koptseva External LSA4 BE

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Helping learners of intermediate levels to listen for detail more effectivelyAlisa Kopsteva

Candidate number: 003

Centre number: UA007

24.06.2015

Word count: 2444

Alisa Koptseva, LSA4, Skills: Helping learners of Intermediate levels to listen for detail more effectively.

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Contents

1.0 Introduction.................................................................................................................... 32.0. Analysis2.1. Definition....................................................................................................................... 32.2. Top-down vs. Bottom-up in Listening for Detail.............................................................. 42.3. Advantages of Listening for detail................................................................................... 52.4. Disadvantages of Listening for detail............................................................................... 53.0. Issues and Suggestions3.1. Lack of background knowledge of a certain topic...................................................... 63.1. Suggestion..................................................................................................................... 63.2. Mixed ability students................................................................................................... 63.2. Suggestion..................................................................................................................... 63.3. Hindering of clear comprehension by fillers and false starts.......................................... 73.3. Suggestion..................................................................................................................... 73.4. Difficulties in transforming what is heard into written form........................................ 73.4. Suggestion..................................................................................................................... 73.5. By checking comprehension answers a teacher can be mislead as to the learners

performance on listening. ............................................................................................8

3.5. Suggestion...................................................................................................................... 8Bibliography...................................................................................................................... 9AppendicesAppendix 1 ...................................................................................................................... 10Appendix 2....................................................................................................................... 12Appendix 3...................................................................................................................... 13Appendix 4...................................................................................................................... 14Appendix 5...................................................................................................................... 15

1.0 Introduction


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According to the contemporary research more and more emphasis is put on listening as one of four fundamental language skills. Listening is considered to be an important part of communication, the way to process and receive new information, closely related to speaking and by no means a ‘passive’ skill (Field 2008; Mendelsohn 1994). This implies that listening involves cognitive processes such as bottom-up (analysis of linguistic features) and top-down (conceptual analysis of an aural text). It is known that native speakers apply both processes simultaneously and unconsciously (Field, 1999).

From my teaching experience it was observed that many students in Ukraine struggle with clear understanding through listening. They are disconcerted and frantic to enhance their listening skills. For the learners, listening for detail out of other listening sub-skills (listening for specific information and gist) becomes a stumbling block in their development as it requires enormous cognitive and processing work. Hence, improving the listening for detail sub-skill and learning its strategies becomes of utmost importance. For this, in this essay I will concentrate on listening for detail in order for the learners to achieve better acquirement.

2.0 Analysis

2.1. Definition

Listening processes have been researched by many scientists and, still, there is no consensus in the matter. Anderson & Lynch (1988) say that listening is the active process of applying existing knowledge and comparing it to new information. Field (2001) agrees with the idea of extracting exact information and making connections to world knowledge. Underwood (1989) defines listening as the activity of paying attention and finding out the meaning. Whereas, Mendelsohn (1994) simplifies listening to the ability of understanding native speakers. Both Mendelsohn and Field mention the strategic nature of listening.

Wilson (2008) compares human listening to that of animals. It is qualitatively different because humans’ listening is purposeful, meaningful and more divergent. Therefore, he outlines four types of listening:

Listening for gist – finding out the general idea e.g. What problem are they discussing?; Listening for specific information – concentrating on specific data e.g. listening for time, date,

place of a train arriving; Listening for detail – getting to know the details of the message e.g. spotting the differences in

two alike stories; Inferential listening – learning about the speakers’ attitude to a situation e.g. How does the

speaker feel about ‘N’? What do you think they talked about before this?.

According to Wilson (2008:10), listening for detail occurs when there is a need to retrieve the details, but a listener cannot afford to listen selectively because he/she does not know exactly what information will meet the purpose of listening. I consider Wilson’s definition to be the most accurate and will use it for this essay.

However different those definitions are, I can summarise that listening for detail is a complex conscious strategic and analytical process of handling various data in the search for detailed and precise meaning.


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This definitely requires diversified sub-skills and strategies, which are crucial for effective listeners and have to be trained in L2 learners.

2.2. Top-down vs. Bottom-up in Listening for Detail

According to Anderson & Lynch (1988:4) effective listening occurs in four stages:

1. The speech is differentiated from the surrounding noises;2. Segmentation into familiar elements occurs (phonemes, words, phrases);3. Syntax and suprasegmentals (intonation, stress, rhythm) are analysed and basic propositions

are formed; 4. The meaning is retained in the short-term memory and the existing linguistic knowledge is used

for an appropriate response.

Nunan (1998), Field (1999), Wilson (2008) and other scholars call this process ‘bottom-up’ listening. It is characterised by:

linear mode (phonological, morphological, lexical syntactical levels of decoding); inductive reasoning (analysis from smaller parts to the whole construction of meaning); deciphering messages (uncovering sounds as words, word phrases and the whole sentences); level of listeners’ linguistic knowledge (without specific linguistic knowledge one may not

construct the right meaning);

When listening for detail the learner will need to use all his/her linguistic knowledge to decode the meaning.

However, for better and efficient extraction of detailed meaning a learner must activate their schemata (Wilson, 2008:15). In other words, employ background knowledge to construct the full meaning of a message. Considering different works of Nunan (1998), Anderson & Lynch (1988:13), Wilson (2008), Field (2001), Broughton (1980), Brown (2001) and other linguists, it is possible to summarise that ‘top-down’ process:

Implies the use of different types of knowledge (situational, background, contextual, correlation between the situation and the speaker, other correlations);

Employs deductive thinking (going from general ‘schemata’ on the topic to the specific situation);

Requires substantial inferencing, predicting, comparison, constructing, anticipating thinking skills;

Involves a listener in active construction of the meaning;

Let’s take a look at the following dialogue:

A: That’s the doorbell!

B: I’m in the bathroom.

A: OK.


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It may sound as isolated utterances, however, by using the prior knowledge of the experienced situation, the listener can reconstruct the meaning: A: request; B: Excuse; A: acceptance of excuse.

Learners who rely too much on bottom-up processes are deprived of important sources of information that will help them to interpret a text. Conversely, overreliance on top-down processes may lead learners to unfounded assumptions due to disregard of crucial details. Thus, relying solely on one of the mentioned processes may result in a failure of comprehension.

‘The interactive processing’, in its turn, overcomes the disadvantages of both processes, complements and reinforces the comprehension. The complexity and simultaneousness of the processes influence comprehension. The interactive model works as equilibrium among the top-down and bottom-up processes. If the bottom-up information is faulty, the listener will opt for the top-down sources. This is what the lower-intermediate L2 learners do when the understanding is blunt (Field, 1999).

2.3. Advantages of Listening for detail

Firstly, by being exposed to authentic texts the learners improve their listening for detail sub-skill through addressing problems of recognition and understanding, forming hypothesis and comparing it to what was heard, reformulating hypothesis and storing it for the future use.

Secondly, extensive experience in listening for detail enables the learner to process spoken input in a highly automatic way, which is characteristic of an expert listener.

Finally, this is the main sub-skill which is used predominantly in Cambridge, IELTS, and TOEFL exams to test the candidates’ listening competence (Field 2009:32-33).

2.4. Disadvantages of Listening for detail

According to Field (2009:30), answering comprehension questions is ‘uninformative’ as this gives us rather superficial judgement of learners’ understanding of the perceived message. Thus, it is quite difficult to measure what facilitated learners’ understanding and where his/her weaknesses are.

In the usual English classroom listening comprehension is checked by means of lists of questions, gap-fill and multiple-choice tasks. The correct answers mislead a teacher as he/she thinks that the students have managed to process information. Also, if the answers are incorrect, there is usually no hard evidence provided as to why the learners did not succeed. In truth, the activity may serve primarily for testing the students rather than developing their listening skills (Field 2009:26).

Comprehension approach is often associated with the teacher-centred lessons, where students report their answers in an isolated fashion, and the exam format, where the atmosphere is far from the communicative.

With these considerations in mind, a teacher can turn to the comprehension approach when teaching listening for detail, however, be aware of its limitations in the communicative classroom. Furthermore,


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to appropriate this sub-skill in full scale, students need to address both the bottom-up and top-down processes by continuous usage of their linguistic and background knowledge.

3.0. Issues and Suggestions

3.1. Lack of the background knowledge of a certain topic.

The Intermediate learners of Eastern cultures sometimes are not aware of special cultural topics, events, or realia of the English world. For example, not all Ukrainian/Russian students know about Thanksgiving Day in the USA. Not knowing the concept of Thanksgiving Day makes it difficult to listen for detail.

3.1. Suggestion

Aim: for learners to raise awareness of a specific topic in order to prepare students for the listening activity.

Procedure:

1. Activate the learners’ schemata by asking what they know about a more general concept (e.g. festivals).

2. Present the concept through pictures, visuals and realia (app.1). Give information about the genre of delivery.

3. Ask students to predict the content and to think of parallels in their culture for this certain concept.

Evaluation: Use of pictures and aids raises students’ awareness by activating their schemata. The predicting strategy provides better understanding of a topic by involving students cognitively and generating expectations (Nunan 1998). Personalisation appeals to different kinds of learners and provides deeper understanding of a topic by comparing two concepts.

3.2. Mixed ability students.

In bigger groups some students (e.g. Ukrainian/Russian, Chinese) find the task trite while others struggle with the long twisted questions. The weaker learners’ motivation decreases as their effective filter increases due to the complexity of the tasks, as well as the content of the listening itself.

3.2. Suggestion

Aim: to facilitate the listening for detail for students of different abilities.

Procedure:

1. Use 3 different listening tracks based on the same topic: a simpler one for weaker students and a more difficult one for stronger (app.2).

2. Give 3 different grids to weaker and stronger students.3. The students do jigsaw listening (Field 2009:73) by exchanging the information and filling the

grid.


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Evaluation: Differentiating listening for detail by providing students with graded tasks (rather than graded listening tracks) will help students to successfully cope with the task. Jigsaw listening makes listening more ’real-life’, successful interactive and purposeful (Penny Ur 2008). Simpler tasks for the weaker students serve as a credit of success and, thus, increase students’ motivation.

3.3.Hindering of clear comprehension by fillers and false starts.For the Intermediate learners it may be difficult to recognise details in the stream of fast flow of spontaneous speech as the letter is redundant and dense with fillers and false starts (Field 2009). The students can be deceived by false starts and lose the logical string on meanings in the message.

3.3.Suggestion

Aim: for learners to notice the fillers and false starts in the rapid spontaneous speech.

Procedure: 1. Ss are given 4 sentences (app.3). Ask them to listen, follow the tape script and underline words

which are not important for understanding of a message. 2. Ss discuss answers in pairs. T. Monitors and gives selective f/b (app. 3) and clarification CCQs:

Why are these words not important? Why do people use them? What do we call them? (F/FS);3. Ss listen to the recording and notice more fillers and false starts.

Evaluation: The exposure to authentic speech will raise students’ awareness about how the speech disfluences act in spontaneous speech and why they hinder the main meaning of the message. SS will notice fillers and false starts by listening to the recording again and spotting false starts and fillers in the tape script. It may be useful for the further training of the inferential listening sub-skill, as the learners may understand the attitude of a speaker.

3.4.Difficulties in transforming what is heard into written form.

Scrivener (2001) mentions that Arabic, as well as Chinese, and Japanese speakers use different orthography, which runs from right to left and in Japanese it also can go from bottom to the top. This substantially influences listening for detail in cases when there is a need in taking notes. The writing process itself can be time-consuming and prevent learners from following the speaker, extracting and retaining the meaning of an aural message.

3.4. Suggestion

Aim: To facilitate listening for detail in a note taking activity by simplifying note taking process.

Procedure: 1. Prepare Ss for the note taking activity by giving clear instructions.2. Explain that there are 2 stories/speakers and 5 sub-headings to fill in.


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3. Explain that they need to write only key words and short sentences.4. Ask ICQs e.g. How many stories are there? How many columns are there? Are you writing

long sentences?5. Give the grids and start listening (app.4). Check in pairs after listening.

Evaluation: Presenting the ‘detail’ task in the organised form of grid will minimise writing work and thus allow students to concentrate on listening for detail rather than on writing skill. The numbers and sub-headings serve as a starting point for every statement and subconsciously guide students in the Western mode of note taking. This skill may be useful for the future real life situations (e.g. taking notes of the lecture at the university).

3.5.The testing (rather than learning) purpose of questions on listening comprehension. The answers to the comprehension questions are not always evidence of improvement of the listening for detail sub-skill. It is possible that Intermediate students guessed, asked their partner or used any other ways to cope with the task rather than listening. They do not improve the listening, sub-skill but test it (Field 2009).

3.5.SuggestionAim: for a teacher to check the listening comprehension and identify areas for improvement of the listening for detail sub-skill.Procedure:

1. T. gives instructions to the L. for detail task 1(app.5)2. Ss listen and spot the differences between people’s birthdays.3. Students listen again and complete the task 2(app.5)4. Students discuss and analyse their performance and answer the questionnaire. 5. Ss submit their questionnaires to the teacher.

Evaluation: These activities (task1,2 app.5) will be useful for both the teacher and the learners because the latter can have the f/b on incorrect answers. By analysing the learners’ answers in the questionnaire a teacher will have an idea on what areas must be improved and how to address the current listening issues of the students. By answering the questionnaire the learners’ are applying meta cognitive strategies, which help them to better notice and improve their weaknesses in listening for detail sub-skill.


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Bibliography

1. Field John. 2009. Listening in the language classroom. Cambridge University Press.2. Wilson, J.J. 2008. How to teach listening Pearson Education Limited.3. Penny Ur. 2008. Teaching Listening Comprehension Cambridge University Press.4. Field John. (1999). Key concepts in ELT. ELT Journal Volume 53/4 October. Oxford University

Press. 5. Field, J. (1998). Skills and strategies: towards a new methodology for listening. ELT Journal, 52,

110-118.6. Field John. (2002). The Changing face of Listening. Methodology in Language Teaching edited by

Jack C. Richards, Willy A. Renandya. Cambridge University Press.7. Nunan David (2002) Listening in Language Learning. Methodology in Language Teaching edited

by Jack C. Richards, Willy A. Renandya. Cambridge University Press.8. Gilakhani A. P., Ahmadi M.R. (2011). Journal of Language Teaching and Research, Vol.2, No.5,

pp.977-988 September.9. Underwood, M. 1989. Teaching Listening. Longman Group UK.10. Anderson A. & Lynch T. 1988. Listening. Oxford: Oxford University Press.11. Mendelsohn, D. 1994. Learning to listen. San Diego: Domine Press.12. Scrivener, J.2001. Learner English Cambridge University Press.


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Appendices:

Appendix 1

Look at these pictures. What can you see? What are your associations? Does it remind you of something?


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Appendix 2

Task 1. Listen to a story attentively and answer these questions.

Story A

1. Where was the America’s Cup yacht race?

2. What did the sailor do with Kangaroo?

3. Why did he decide to take pictures?

4. What happened to the sailors things?

5. Why?

6. How much did he lose?

Story B

1. What was the insurance against?

2. Did the insurance company know what really happened?

3. Why did the man win the case?

4. How did the insurance company ‘pay off’ the man for his actions?

5. How much was the fine?

Story C

1. What was the problem with the woman’s house?

2. What did instruction tell?

3. What happened to the house?

4. Why?

Adapted for different Intermediate levels from Face 2 Face Upper-Intermediate. 2013. By Chris Redstone & Gillie Cunningham. (Unit 4A, CD1 track 33)


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Appendix 3

Task 1. Listen and underline words and expressions that are not important for the understanding of the idea expressed in the sentence.

1. So it’s ... I mean, it’s always a bit strange because people kind of forget about my birthday.2. You see, my husband died um thirteen years ago, but er you know life goes on, doesn’t it?3. I never ... un I didn’t enjoy birthdays very much when I was a kid because you know I always

had to like share it with my sister.4. Well, I don’t like ... er I hate getting older, so I just sort of pretend that it’s a normal day.

Answer keys:

1. So it’s ... I mean, it’s always a bit strange because people kind of forget about my birthday.2. You see , my husband died um thirteen years ago, but er you know life goes on, doesn’t it?3. I never ... um I didn’t enjoy birthdays very much when I was a kid because you know I always

had to like share it with my sister.4. Well , I don’t like ... er I hate getting older, so I just sort of pretend that it’s a normal day.

Task 2. Look at these expressions again and mark them into Fillers (F) and False Starts (FS).

Task 3. Listen to the recording again and write down more fillers and false starts.

Adapted from Face 2 Face Intermediate. 2013. By Chris Redstone & Gillie Cunningham. (Unit 5c, CD1 track 48)


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Appendix 4

Task1. Listen to 2 stories and make notes of what was different. Include as much detail as possible.

Story A Story B1. People 1)___________________

2)___________________3)___________________4)___________________

1)___________________2)___________________3)___________________4)___________________

2. Actions 1)___________________2)___________________3)___________________4)___________________

1)___________________2)___________________3)___________________4)___________________

3. Reasons for what happened

1)___________________2)___________________3)___________________4)___________________

1)___________________2)___________________3)___________________4)___________________

4. Results 1)___________________2)___________________3)___________________4)___________________

1)___________________2)___________________3)___________________4)___________________

Task 2.Listen again and write down more detail.

Listening material taken from Face2Face Upper-Intermediate. 2013. Chris Redstone & Gillie Cunningham. Cambridge University press. (CD 1, track 23).


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Appendix 5

Task1. Listen and spot the differences between 4 speakers.

Speaker 1 Speaker 2 Speaker 3 Speaker 4

Task2. Listen to four people talking about their most memorable birthdays. Answer the questions and explain WHY this happened to the people.

Which person: WHY1. Got a very unusual card on his/her

birthday?2. Was very happy to have his /her own

birthday cake?3. Met someone special at his/her

birthday party?4. Had three million people at his/her

birthday party?

Questionnaire.

1. What extract was the most difficult to understand? Why?________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________;

2. Why do you think so?3. Was the speed of the speech: 1. slow 2.OK 3.too fast? (underline).4. I understood every word when: 1. Jean; 2. Ruby; 3.Stuart; 4.Ashley spoke. (underline).5. I didn’t understand every word when: 1. Jean; 2. Ruby; 3.Stuart; 4.Ashley spoke. (underline).6. Whose speech was easy? Why?7. Did fillers and false starts disturb you and prevent from listening?8. Where there long strings of unidentifiable sounds?9. For my listening skills I would like to_____________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________;


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UA007 003 Koptseva External LSA4 BE